Weighing Jeremy Rifkin's Empathic Civilization

Recently I posted this video in the Philosophy of Mind community on Google+, and it sparked a bit of a discussion:

Jeremy Rifkin argues that our brains are soft-wired not for aggression or self-interest but for sociability and attachment (i.e. empathy).

I agree with the ideas presented in the video. However, the reason why many species have empathy for others in their group is because the probability of survival is increased by orders of magnitude by forming a well organized team. Consider that insects such as bees and ants are very successful because they form strong teams. Therefore, many species, including humans, undergo natural selection and adaptation to being good team members. But if this is so, then why are people not concentrating on building strong teams? Well, unfortunately, currently humans do not always make very good team members and many of the teams that are formed do more damage than good. This often gives team membership a bad name. Humans need more adaptation and understanding about how to build strong teams.

You make a very good point: Empathy may be the drive to form teams and civilizations, because it helps to ensure survival.

Your second point about more destructive teams is definitely a curious one. In another interview, Rifkin responds to question about why, in the very process of creating an empathic civilization, we also have world wars, genocide, and other mass destruction. Rifkin attributed these simply to "blowback moments, implosions and collapses." In other words, there are glitches or short circuits to our empathic wiring.

I'd like to invoke Sigmund Freud, however, and argue that, yes, we human have empathic wiring, but that we are also wired for aggression. Freud posited that there were both life (eros) and death (thanatos) drives. So the destruction we have inflicted on each other aren't just glitches in the empathic wiring, as Rifkin argues, but are fundamental aspects of our nature, too, that is, destructive wiring.*

Here's that interview: Jeremy Rifkin: The Empathic Civilization.

There were two other, relatively lengthy comments, acknowledging more competitive teams and conflictual events and also emphasizing the sharing of positive experiences. 

*The more I think about it, the more I believe that Rifkin's notion of empathy, and the mirror neurons in particular, is actually synonymous with sympathy or compassion, that is, feeling with or for others.  My unconscious must've picked up on this particular notion, so I felt compelled to invoke the dual drives of Freud: That is, not just sympathy, but also aggression.  Instead, the definition of empathy as putting oneself in others' shoes or seats means it's fundamentally neutral; it is first and foremost a vehicle for understanding.  Once we have that deeper understanding of others, we can act positively (e.g. sympathetically) or negatively (e.g. hostilely).
 

Weighing Catherine Courage's Design Thinking

Catherine Courage, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience, leads the shift at Citrix - from (a) dreaming up technology and delivery technology simply for the sake of technology, to (b) building a deeper empathy for customers and creating products and solutions that meet their actual needs.

This is not new thinking at all, but the fact that a renowned consultancy like McKinsey highlights it suggests that companies are still far far from adopting it, let alone grasp what it truly means.  As I argued in Part 2 - Making the Future, CEOs and their people may find themselves trapped in The Dilemma of Self-Centeredness, and not even know it.

Courage distinguishes the design thinking approach that she and her team adopts, from others who start with the problem, which they have an intuition about, and race toward a solution.  To me, starting with a problem, or an issue, challenge or objective, is actually a fine thing to do.

But to her point, Theory of Algorithms and The Core Algorithm emphasize focusing on the problem without preconceived notions and without a toolkit of solutions clambering to be used.  Instead, like design thinking, my conceptual framework and practical applications model work at engaging others - seek first to understand, then to be understood - for example, via an algorithm I call Galileo (Human) Algorithm, which counters Self-Centeredness.
 

On being where we are supposed to be

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I believe this: Though I may be not so clear at the moment about the purpose for why I am where I am, I trust that that clarity will come in time.

Note: This post is an example of the range of subjects that fall under the rubric of the Tripartite Model (TM) | Religion, that is, philosophical, humanistic and fateful matters.
 

John Donne on our Boundedness

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On occasion I hear others say No man is an island.  By and large, they reference the phrase properly, that is, consistently with what John Donne meant.  But I often wonder how much they know of his more elaborated meditation on this matter: namely, that all life and matter are inviolably and intricately bound up.  Ernest Hemingway drew on For Whom the Bell Tolls, as the title of his 1940 novel.  Donne speaks profoundly to how a part of each of us dies, whenever anyone or anything is lost.  So anytime we hear that death knell, it is for us indeed.

Note: This post is an example of the range of subjects that fall under the rubric of the Tripartite Model (TM) | Religion, that is, philosophical, humanistic and fateful matters.
 

Dalai Lama on our Quandaries

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I'd like to believe that the Dalai Lama speaks only to a segment of humankind, which fall into a quandary about how to live life. How big this segment is, I don't know. But I'd also like to imagine that there are many who earn a living, and live reasonably happy, healthy lives and who worry about the future but aren't paralyzed into an empty, meaningless life.

Note: This post is an example of the range of subjects that fall under the rubric of the Tripartite Model (TM) | Religion, that is, philosophical, humanistic and fateful matters.

How to tolerate tedium in life

Technically

I suppose all of us come up with algorithms that help us tolerate any tedium in life, though not all of us may call them so.  Of course, when applied, these algorithms may very well cause others a bit of an annoyance in turn.  But there you go, I've posited that while algorithms may be perfect, their application is simply not so.
 

If we cast our minds widely

Tornado

There, you see, a disaster may indeed have an unintentional, positive effect.  So if we cast our mind widely enough to weigh alternative viewpoints, then we might see how a disaster is not so much of a disaster.